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Larry Palmer
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More Duphly

November’s column on Jacques Duphly and his accompanied harpsichord pieces motivated two readers to send me their welcome compact disc recordings of solo harpsichord works by the 18th-century French composer. 

San Francisco-based harpsichordist Katherine Roberts Perl (www.kathyrobertsperl.com) serves up 68 minutes of Duphly favorites played on John Phillips’ superb replica of a 1707 Nicholas Dumont double harpsichord. Her chosen repertoire comprises five dance movements and the titled works La de Belombre, La Damanzy, Les Grâces, La Vanlo, La de la Tour, Médée, and La Forqueray, concluding with the composer’s most extended piece, his Chaconne in F (Dorian Recordings DOR-93169, recorded in 1996, released in 1998).

Yves-G. Préfontaine’s two-disc traversal of Duphly’s Pièces de Clavecin (ATMA Classique ACD2 2716) was recorded in November 2014 and issued in 2015. The Canadian artist utilizes a very lovely Hemsch-based two-manual instrument by Montréal builder Yves Beaupré. The extensive program, organized by keys, includes 27 works culled from all four books of Duphly’s harpsichord music.

Préfontaine also performs the lengthy F major/minor Chaconne, as does harpsichordist Medea Bindewald (on her Coviello Classics disc, cited in the November article). In comparing play-lists, I was fascinated to note the wide variance in tempi for this composition: Binewald plays it in 7 and a half minutes; Perl 8 minutes, 16 seconds; and Préfontaine 9 and a half minutes—wide enough variance that it sent me to the keyboard for my own read-through (since each of the recordings had seemed faster than I would play the piece).

I do not mean this to be critical of these fleet performances: references to Chaconne tempi in several widely-quoted sources (L’Affilard, 1705, and Pajot, 1732, for instance) suggest quick beats when these 18th-century remarks are translated into modern metronome markings. I was comforted to come across a 2007 reference to the findings of Dutch musicologist Jan van Biezen, who suggests that perhaps we read these arcane writings wrongly and points out that if we were to adjust the suggested speed to include both the back and forth movements of a mechanical device we might come closer to the more stately tempi that the music itself seems to suggest: approximately one beat equaling 78 or 79 MM (www.janvanbiezen.nl/articles.html—accessed “Tempo of French Baroque Dances,” February 28, 2016).

I have noticed for several decades that I now prefer slower tempi than I did in my younger years. Indeed students became quite used to my “I’d take that a bit slower” remark, especially when dealing with baroque music. It is a normal progression (or regression, if you wish): as we age, we move somewhat more slowly. I prefer to allow the music itself an unpressured time to unfold; the Chaconne seems to require both elegance and grace. Surely life must have moved more slowly in an age that did not have mechanized travel or instant communication. (I hope it is not too suggestive of a bad pun to conclude these thoughts with a phrase that composer Duphly might have understood: “chacun à son goût” [“each to one’s own taste”]?) 

 

Two more mystery novels

The harpsichord is mentioned thirteen times (the clavichord only once) in author Imogen Robertson’s novel Anatomy of Murder, set in the London of 1781. This second book featuring unlikely forensic sleuths Mrs. Harriet Westerman and Gabriel Crowther is a well-written page-turner dealing with the British aftermath of the American Revolution, skullduggery that besets the (fictional) His Majesty’s Theatre production of a new Italian opera starring a phenomenal soprano of unexpected parentage and a favorite continental castrato singer, plus the daily joys and sorrows of both titled and lower-class inhabitants of the fast-expanding and radically changing urban metropolis. (Pamela Dorman/Viking Books, 2012. ISBN 978-0-670-02317-2). 

A visit to Half Price Books, Dallas’s mega-emporium of previously owned reading material, resulted in the acquisition of another work from the pen of Donna Leone, the American expatriate author who resides in Venice. While musical references in Willful Behavior, the eleventh of her Commissario Guido Brunetti series (2002) are less frequent than those in the works I cited in my January 2016 column, there were four that stood out in this volume: an analogy to a Haydn Symphony, a similarity to a Scarlatti oratorio, the mention of Vivaldi’s baptismal church in Venice, and a plot twist reference to Puccini’s opera Tosca. Ms. Leone continues to be both lover and patron of classical music and her books serve as welcome guides to her adopted city for any musical armchair traveler. 

 

Semibrevity

Guest blogger Mandy Macdonald writes about Nelly Chaplin who performed on her 1775 Jacobus and Abraham Kirkman two-manual harpsichord early in the 20th century (illustrated with a picture of a similar 1755 Kirkman now in the collection of historic instruments at Musical Instrument Museums, Edinburgh). Free access is available at www.semibrevity.com, where you should also scroll down to read the amazing story of T. W. Taphouse, British collector of early instruments, who purchased his first Shudi and Broadwood 1773 harpsichord at age 19, in 1857!

The Semibrevity website continues to broaden our knowledge of these largely unfamiliar early proponents of early music on early instruments in its well-researched and beautifully illustrated postings.

 

Comments are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer [email protected] or 10125 Cromwell Drive, Dallas, Texas 75229.

 

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Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer
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Harpsichord Plus: 

The Accompanied Music 

of Jacques Duphly

As a genre, accompanied harpsichord music seems to have come into being early in the 18th century. Indeed, the harpsichord accompanied by lute is commented on late in the 17th century when the lutenist Porion accompanied the keyboardist Hardel. In Rome the harpsichord accompanied by violin was noted in 1727 at Cardinal Colonna’s, and only two years later, in 1729, there was a similar event in Paris, for which the keyboardist was none other than François Couperin’s daughter.

The first examples to appear in print seem to have been the Pièces de Claveçin en Sonates, op. 3, of Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville (1734). (Earlier works sometimes cited as examples of this genre—works by Dieupart [1701] and Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre [1707]—actually appear to be different editions of the same pieces, not meant to be played as duos.) Mondonville’s sonatas were followed by Michel Corrette’s Sonates pour le Claveçin avec un Accompagnement de Violon, op. 25 (1742); Mondonville’s Pièces de Claveçin avec Voix ou Violon, op. 5 (1748); and by the one popular group of compositions still found in the active performing repertoire of the 21st century, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s five sets of Pièces de Claveçin en Concert, published in 1741. That these Rameau pieces belong to this same line of publications cannot be doubted, for the composer wrote in his preface: “The success of recently published sonatas, which have come out as harpsichord pieces with a violin part, has given me the idea of following much the same plan in the new harpsichord pieces, which I am venturing to bring out today . . .”

A little further on Rameau continued: “These pieces lose nothing by being played on the harpsichord alone; indeed, one would never suspect them capable of any other adornment . . .”

This primacy of the harpsichord, which really was meant to be accompanied by the other instrument, is borne out by the words of Charles Avison, who, in 1756, insisted that the violins should “always be subservient to the harpsichord,” and by C.-J. Mathon de la Coeur, the editor of Almanach Musical, who wrote in 1777,

 

We cannot resist pointing out here that the harpsichord is the only creature in this world that has been able to claim sufficient respect from other instruments to keep them in their place and cause itself to be accompanied in the full sense of the term. Voices, even the most beautiful ones, lack this privileged position; they are covered mercilessly . . . but as soon as it is a question of accompanying a harpsichord, you see submissive and timid instrumentalists softening their sounds like courtiers in the presence of their master, before whom they dare not utter a word without having read permission in his eyes. 

 

Methinks times have changed since M. de la Coeur published these comments!

Why, then, one might ask, would another instrumentalist agree to perform with a harpsichordist in such a subservient manner? And further, what was the purpose of having an accompanying instrumentalist there at all? As to the first question, one could assume that not all pieces on a program would be of the accompanied type; some sonatas for the solo instrument with (or without) a figured basso continuo could return a preeminent position to the non-keyboard instrument. As for the second question, Avison answers this in the preface to his op. 7 (1760): “They are there to help the expression.”

The second half of the 18th century was a transitional time when the fortepiano was making ever deeper inroads into the public awareness, when the abrupt dynamic contrasts of a C. P. E. Bach or the Mannheim composers were popular, and every possible device or gimmick was being invented and employed to aid the harpsichord in producing more dynamic variety: pedal-activated machine stops, the soft leather “plectra” of the peau de buffle register, organ-like foot-pedal-operated louvers that were installed above the soundboard, and instrumental accompaniment.

The six accompanied pieces of Jacques Duphly have been played less frequently than his other harpsichord works because they were omitted from Heugel’s 1967 Le Pupitre volume of his “complete” harpsichord pieces. A modern edition of the three G-major pieces with violin had been published in Paris in 1961, but the additional three in F major were not generally available to contemporary players until the Swiss publisher Minkoff offered its facsimile edition of Duphly’s Third Book of Harpsichord Pieces in 1987. My attention was drawn to these six enhanced works when reviewing the four compact discs that comprise Yannick Le Gaillard’s complete recording of Duphly’s output, in which he included all six of the “added violin” pieces in collaboration with violinist Ryo Terakado (ADDA 581097/100, 1988). 

For those to whom Duphly is not a household name, the composer was born in Rouen in 1715 and had the exquisite good taste to die in Paris in 1789 immediately before the aristocratic world in which he functioned was totally upended by the French Revolution. One gets a succinct picture of this minor master of the keyboard from two contemporaries. Pierre-Louis Daquin wrote in 1752: . . . Duflitz [sic] passes in Paris for a very good harpsichordist. He has much lightness of touch and a certain softness which, sustained by ornaments, marvelously render the character of the pieces.” Marpurg, writing in 1754, has passed on to us this portrait of a rather particular character who obviously preferred light action for his keyboards: “Duphly, a pupil of Dagincour, plays the harpsichord only, in order, as he says, not to spoil his hand with the organ. He lives in Paris, where he instructs the leading families.”

Duphly had published his first two books of harpsichord music in 1744 and 1748. These volumes did not include any accompanied pieces, but his third book (1758) begins with three works in the new style. (It must have been taken for granted at this time that one could play either with or without the accompanying instrument, for nothing that mentions the added partner is noted on the title page, or elsewhere.) The accompanied pieces simply appeared with a third staff added above the usual two for the harpsichord; the word Violon is engraved above this additional staff.

The first three accompanied pieces, in F major, present varied tonal pictures. Number one is an Ouverture that begins with a Grave in the customary dotted rhythm, continues with a livelier contrapuntal section, and ends with a two-measure stately cadence. Two character pieces follow: La De May is a gracious rondo named for Reine DeMay, a midwife who played some role in a shady enterprise involving Casanova and the Parisian banker Pouplinière. There is, however, nothing particularly shady about this delicate, rather sunny piece. The third piece, La Madin, is an Italianate gigue, named in honor of the Abbé Henri Madin, choirmaster of the Chapelle Royal and governor of the musical pages. It may be a reference to these youngsters that informs the playful character of this quick-paced work.

That these pieces are worth restoring to the repertoire is not in doubt. Indeed, all of Duphly’s pieces are worthwhile for reasons admirably articulated by Gustav Leonhardt, one of the first modern harpsichordists to champion these French works. In notes to a disc of solo works by the pre-revolutionary composer, Leonhardt wrote, “. . . Duphly’s pieces concealed within their notes the secret of sonority. Such a style of composition demands as much expert knowledge as writing difficult or bizarre works. The perfect always seems easy in the eyes of the non-initiated.”

Duphly’s third volume continues with the very best of his solo harpsichord compositions—the F-minor rondeau La Forqueray, a monumental F-major-minor-major Chaconne, the turbulent and virtuose Medée, winsome and moving D-major Les Grâces, the rocket-themed D-minor La De Belombre, and two graceful Menuets. Then comes the G-major accompanied set—three character pieces, all in quick tempi, titled La De Casaubon, La Du Tailly, and La De Valmallette, the latter two both known Parisian vocalists. The volume concludes with five more solo harpsichord pieces in various keys.

In revisiting the Le Gaillard recordings I found them to be somewhat superficial and too unyielding for my current tastes. Searching the web to see if there were some more recent recordings I came across two that were of interest: a disc of accompanied works by Duphly and the very young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose earliest-known keyboard sonatas (K. 6–9) belong to the accompanied harpsichord genre, recorded at the Musée des Beaux Arts, Chartres, by harpsichordist Violaine Cochard and violinist Stéphanie-Marie Degand (Agogique AGO009, 2010). Online reviewer Johan van Veen wrote of this recent offering, “Considering that the Duphly pieces are not often recorded and that Mozart’s sonatas are too often—if at all—played on rather inappropriate instruments, this disc deserves an enthusiastic reception.”

A recording entirely devoted to works by Duphly receives my highest recommendation: harpsichordist Medea Bindewald, whose playing demonstrates the most satisfying musicality, with just the right amount of agogic give and take, is joined by violinist Nicolette Moonen on the German label Coviello Classics (CD COV91404). Recorded during August 2013 in Swithland, UK, here is a first-rate program selected from three of the four Duphly volumes, played from the original engraved texts (the same scores that I recommend, all four volumes of which are available in the series of Performers’ Facsimiles published by Broude Brothers). Ms. Bindewald lists Robert Hill (Freiburg) and Ketil Haugsand (Cologne) among her teachers, so it is not completely surprising that she plays a magnificent instrument built by another Hill brother, the American harpsichord maker Keith Hill. I was charmed and delighted throughout the ample hour-and-a-quarter of this well-chosen recital. Only occasionally did I wish that the violin were slightly less prominent in its balance with the harpsichord. After all, the bow was meant to accompany the keyboard! (Thank you, Mr. Avison and M. Mathon de la Coeur!)

When I first spoke about Duphly to a Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society gathering at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on April 6, 1991, I began by expressing appreciation to the author who had already published most of the information offered here. Once again, I need to share my gratitude to this pioneering scholar of French early keyboard music, Professor Emeritus David Fuller, from the State University of New York at Buffalo, whose research and writings have formed the basis not only of my own presentations, but, as I have noticed in researching the topic, nearly everyone else’s. As the authority who published “Accompanied Keyboard Music” in the journal Musical Quarterly (60:2, April 1974, pp. 222–245), as well as the subsequent articles on Duphly and the Accompanied Sonata in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, Fuller has been both leader and guide for Duphly studies. I came to know David better when I was asked to write his biography for the American Grove, and also when we “shared” a harpsichord major student, Lewis Baratz, who, after completing his undergraduate study with Professor Fuller, graced the master of music program in harpsichord at Southern Methodist University, before going on to earn his doctorate in musicology.

And I cannot think of, or play, Duphly’s music without remembering a beloved mixed-breed pet—part Dachshund, part Lhasa Apso—who loved to listen to the harpsichord, usually unaccompanied. Adopted from the local SPCA animal shelter, where his name was listed as “Blue,” he shared our Dallas lives for the larger part of two decades, during which time he seemed at ease with the more distinctive name I had chosen for him. ν

 

Comments or questions are always welcome. Please send them to [email protected] or Dr. Larry Palmer, 10125 Cromwell Drive, Dallas, TX 75229.

Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer
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According to Janus

The ancient Romans worshipped many gods. Janus, who provided the name for our first month of the year, had two faces, which allowed him to look in both directions: back to the past and forward to the future. Thus, a Janusian column seems appropriate for the first month of a new year.

 

Looking Back: Topics of the
2016 Harpsichord News
Columns

January: Buried Treasures: The Harpsichord Pages in Retrospect (2006–2015); Something New: Mysteries with Musical References

March: William Bolcom’s Compositions for Solo Harpsichord

April: More Duphly; Two Additional Mystery Novels; Semibrevity Website

May: Historical Keyboard Society of North America Conference at Oberlin College: Duphly, Skowroneck, Leonhardt, and Kreisler—A Twisted Tale

June: Tempi in Early Music from Beverly Jerold Scheibert; Two Clavichords at the Oberlin HKSNA

July: In Memoriam: Drawings by Jane Johnson (A Retrospective Feature Article)

August: Broadening a Harpsichordist’s Horizon: The Fifth East Texas Pipe Organ Festival Continues Tradition

September: Striking Gold: Some Thoughts on Performing Bach’s Goldberg Variations

October: Well-Tempered: Lou Harrison and the Harpsichord

November: Some Thoughts on Programming

December: Christmas Musings: Joseph Wechsberg’s The Best Things in Life; Recordings of the complete harpsichord works of Marchand and Clérambault on compact disc and 21st-century solos on another from the British Harpsichord Society; plus a Christmas Vignette (excerpted from Palmer: Letters from Salzburg).

 

Two Vignettes from 2016 East

Texas Pipe Organ Festival
(November 6–11)

The most recent pipe organ fest in November followed its traditional, successful schedule, albeit with a bit more time allowed for dining and socializing. After the brilliant Sunday evening opening organ recital by Richard Elliot on Kilgore’s prized Roy Perry-designed Aeolian-Skinner organ (Opus 1173, First Presbyterian Church), Christopher Marks (new to the artist roster) began the first full day of the festival on Monday with a recital on the same instrument. His well-designed program devoted to music by Seth Bingham (1882–1972) showed the conservative American church musician to be a composer consistent in craftsmanship, and one indebted to the French school of organ music as well. Nostalgia welled up when, for the first time since high school, I heard again two pieces from Bingham’s organ suite Harmonies of Florence (1929): Savonarola, and one that was in my repertoire in those youthful years, Twilight at Fiesole. These pieces brought back memories of another outstanding advocate for French music, Oberlin professor of organ Fenner Douglass, with whom I had the great privilege of studying during my senior year. Douglass played French organ music ranging from Titelouze to the most recent works of Messiaen, but an American whom he admired and whose music he performed was none other than . . . Seth Bingham. 

 

Vignette Two: In Janus-Speak,
Ave atque Vale (Hail and 

Farewell)

I was not particularly looking forward to the fourth organ concert of our annual “day in Shreveport” even though the program was to take place on the grandest of the festival organs (Aeolian-Skinner opus 1308) in the most accommodating acoustic: St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. Replacing the indisposed Marilyn Keiser as recitalist was the winner of the 2016 Longwood Gardens Competition, Joshua Stafford. His stylishly eclectic program comprised Leo Sowerby’s Comes Autumn Time, Seth Bingham’s Roulade (heard for the second time at this Festival), Lemare’s transcription of Dvorák’s Carnival Overture, a quiet Lied (Douze Pièces) by Gaston Litaize, and, following intermission, Liszt’s lengthy Fantasie and Fugue on the Chorale “Ad nos” from Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. From the opening notes until the final strains of his patriotic encore, it was apparent that this young man is a stellar musician with a seemingly effortless technique that could encompass anything. But more than that, he demonstrated music-making of the highest order, delivered without affectation, obviously played with delight and musical intensity. At the conclusion of this amazing recital, before the final chord had died away in the reverberant cathedral, the audience, as one, rose to its feet, shouting “Bravo.” My own word choice was “Bravissimo!” Welcome to the company of outstanding artists, Joshua Stafford. I can scarcely wait to hear more from your talented fingers, feet, heart, and soul.

The closing event of the festival on Thursday evening was a recital by Frederick Swann at Kilgore’s First Presbyterian Church. Announced as the veteran artist’s final organ concert (he will continue to play church services), this repeat of the program he had given as a rededication concert for Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1173 following its 1966 revision by Roy Perry, capped Swann’s career of some 3,000 recitals with graceful, intense playing, always offered to the benefit of the music. In a class act that will be remembered for a very long time, the acclaimed organist did not play a traditional “encore” to acknowledge the continuing ovation of the large crowd; instead he instructed us to open our hymn books and sing, supported by his inspired accompaniment, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation.” These two unforgettable musical events receive my vote for best in show, ETPOF VI. 

 

The Future: Hello 2017

Billing itself as “the world’s best-selling classical music magazine,” BBC Music is a very good journal. Each monthly copy has affixed to its cover a compact disc, custom-produced to form part of the month’s offerings. For the December 2016 issue the featured composer is Johann Sebastian Bach. Articles discuss “the secret of his genius in ten masterpieces,” attempt to make sense of the extensive Bach family tree, and generally aid the reader/listener in various musical discoveries. This issue also contains 110 reviews of classical music discs by knowledgeable critics. The accompanying CD is of JSB’s final masterpiece, The Art of Fugue, in an orchestration devised by harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani for a substantial baroque instrumental contingent made up of two violins, viola, cello, viola da gamba, violone, two flutes, recorder, oboe, oboe d’amore, oboe da caccia, bassoon, cornetto, and two harpsichords (the players are members of the Academy of Ancient Music). This baroque chamber orchestra version is an attempt to suggest the type of coffee-house performance that Bach might have put together. With some moments of solo harpsichord, but many more with the instrumental band, it is indeed a colorful and unusual performance.

To suggest something for the future, I would like to reference a BBC Music “last page”—one of its “Music That Changed Me” series. In the September 2005 issue, the featured musician was the brilliant, energetic British harpsichordist (and conductor) Richard Egarr. I have been an admirer of his nimble-fingered, exciting playing for quite some time, and a part of what nourishes this spirited musical drive surely could be traced, in part, to the choices he makes for his own listening. Egarr cites six recordings, and I note with interest that only two of them comprise music for a solo keyboard. Both of these discs are historical testaments from unique and path-breaking musical artists. I suspect that many of Egarr’s own savvy musical instincts come from his “listening outside the [keyboard] box,” something I have long advocated, and that I recommend to our readers as a sure path to continuing aural adventures during this new year. My own choices nearly always include vocal works, for listening to good singers or choral ensembles helps incredibly in learning to make our own phrases breathe naturally (a benefit that is also attained by playing, or listening to, wind instruments).

So, for the record (as it were), here are Egarr’s six choices: Music of the Gothic Era (David Munrow); Early Violin Music (Musica Antiqua Köln); Mahler, Symphony I (Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein); Moritz Rosenthal (historical recording of piano music issued by American Columbia’s Biddulph label); Tchaikovsky, Marche Slav (London Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski); and, as the second keyboard item: Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould, piano), which he cites as a performance style that he has had to overcome in his own study of the monumental work.

Finally, dear readers, a few hints of some developing columns that may appear during the first half of 2017: from a group of colleagues who perform contemporary harpsichord music, some listings of their favorite works; an in-depth examination of a Bach prelude and fugue from the WTC; a guest article about some legendary French harpsichordists; an article on harpsichord pedagogy. Any suggestions for other topics of interest?

Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer
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Pedaling the French: 

A ‘Tour de France’ of Revival Harpsichordists 1888–1939

 

I. Near-death and slow rebirth

“Make what you want: this upstart piano will never replace the majestic claveçin!” Thus began my 1989 book Harpsichord in America: a Twentieth-Century Revival with these combative words from the composer Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799). Looking back from our historical perspective, we all know how that prediction turned out! Even for Balbastre himself: his capitulation was a work for the new “upstart” keyboard instrument, a Marche des Marseillois, “arranged for the Forte Piano by Citizen Balbastre, and dedicated to the brave defenders of the French Republic in the year 1792, the first of the Republic.” At least Citizen [Citoyen] Claude-B B survived!

Following a very few antiquarian-inspired appearances throughout the piano-dominated 19th century, the harpsichord’s return to the musical scene as a featured instrument occurred during the Paris Exhibition of 1888 at the instigation of Louis Diémer (1843–1919), a piano professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Diémer was able to borrow a 1769 Pascal Taskin harpsichord to play in several concerts comprising concerted works by Rameau and solo pieces by various French claviçinistes. Of the latter the most popular composer was Louis-Claude Daquin, whose Le Coucou became one of the most-performed works during the early harpsichord revival period.

Diémer and his concerts must have inspired the salon composer Francis Thomé (1850–1909) to write a Rigodon for this most recent French harpsichordist, and thus provide history with the very first new piece for the old instrument. Inspired by Daquin, but also meant as a tribute to Diémer’s “legendary trilling ability,” Thomé’s pièce de claveçin was published by Lemoine in 1893. Around the middle of the 20th century this work was discovered and later recorded in 1976 by harpsichordist Igor Kipnis on a disc of favorite encores. After being captivated by its simple antiquarian charm, I too was able to acquire an original print of the work, thanks to my German friend and European “concert manager” Dr. Alfred Rosenberger, who found it at Noten Fuchs, Frankfurt’s amazing music store, where, apparently, the yellowed score had been on their shelves ever since its publication date. 

As a somewhat-related aside, the probable first harpsichord composition of the 20th century, or at least the earliest one to appear in print, is a Petite Lied by French organist/composer Henri Mulet (1878–1967). This aptly titled work of only 17 measures in 5/4 meter was issued in 1910. (See Harpsichord News, The Diapason, January 2011, p. 12, for a complete facsimile of the score.)

The solo harpsichord works of François Couperin, in a fine 19th-century edition by Johannes Brahms and Friedrich Chrysander, also found some popularity among pianists. From the musical riches to be found in Couperin’s 27 suites, came the lone musical example to be included in the 20th-century’s first harpsichord method book: Technique du Claveçin by Régina Patorni-Casadesus (1886–1961), a slim volume of only eight pages, most of them devoted to stop-changing pedal exercises (thus the genesis of my title—“Pedaling the French”). This one tiny bit of Couperin’s music is the oft-performed Soeur Monique from his 18th Ordre, a work admired and used by many church musicians—some of whom doubtless would be shocked to read in the authoritative reference work on Couperin’s titles, written by Historical Keyboard Society of North America honorary board member Jane Clark Dodgson, that “Sister Monica” may not be a religious “sister,” but refers instead to girls of ill repute, as in a “lady of the night,” according to the definition of the word Soeur by the 17th-century lexicographer Antoine Furetière (1619–1688), “our sisters, as in streetwalkers, or debauched girls.” (See Jane Clark and Derek Connon, ‘The Mirror of Human Life’: Reflections on François Couperin’s Pièces de Claveçin, London: Keyword Press, 2011, p. 170.)

 

II. Early recorded sounds

Beyond printed music and pedagogical writings, how did the classic French keyboard repertoire fare in the newly emerging medium of harpsichord recordings?

After giving a historical salute to the 16 rare 1908 Berlin wax cylinders that share surface noise with some barely audible Bach performed by Wanda Landowska, the earliest commercial recording of a harpsichord dates from about 1913 and was issued on the Favorite label. It preserves an anonymous performance of a work with at least tangential connections to France: the Passepied from J. S. Bach’s French Overture in B Minor (BWV 831). (See Martin Elste, Meilensteine der Bach-Interpretation, reviewed by Larry Palmer in The Diapason, June 2000.)

More easily accessible today are the earliest harpsichord recordings made in 1920 for the Gramophone Company in England by the Dolmetsch-influenced harpsichordist Violet Gordon Woodhouse (1871–1948). Her repertoire included Couperin’s L’Arlequine from the 23rd Ordre (as played on Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 3, Pearl GEMM CD 9242) and Rameau’s Tambourin, from his Suite in E Major. Mrs. Woodhouse became something of a cult figure among British music critics (George Bernard Shaw), upper-class society (the Sitwells), and adventurous musicians (including the avant-garde composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji [1892–1988]), who wrote of Violet’s powerful musical presentations that her playing was “dignified, moving, and expressive, and of a broad, sedate beauty, completely free from any pedagogic didacticism or stiff-limbed collegiate pedantry.” (Quoted in Jessica Douglas-Home: Violet, The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse, London: The Harvill Press, 1966, p. 228.) This should put many of us in our rightful places, although Sorabji’s own excursions into keyboard literature lasting from four to nine hours in performance (example: a Busoni homage with the title Opus Clavicembalisticum) just might call his own authority into question.

Eight years younger than Woodhouse, the better-known Wanda Landowska (1879–1959) made her first commercial recordings for the Victor Company in 1923, just prior to her American concert debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. These six sides included short pieces by the three 1685 boys (Handel, Bach, and Scarlatti) as well as the Rigaudon and Tambourin from Rameau’s Suite in E Minor, and what might be considered the first recording of a contemporary harpsichord work, Landowska’s own Bourée d’Auvergne #1

Lesser-known players got recorded, too: Marguerite Delcour recorded Couperin’s Le Tic-toc-choc [Ordre 18] in 1924. The following year, 1925, one of Landowska’s Berlin students, Anna Linde, recorded the ubiquitous Rameau Tambourin and the even more ubiquitous Coucou by Daquin. If you recognize Linde’s name it might well be for her edition of Couperin’s L’art de toucher le Claveçin—with its translations into English and German offered side by side with the original French, and the printed music made unique by her Germanically precise “corrections” to the composer’s picturesque (but occasionally unmathematical) beaming of some quick roulades in his preludes. Both of Linde’s recorded legacy pieces sound amateurish enough that I seriously doubt that Sorabji would have enjoyed hearing these performances.

As a matter of history, however, it is quite possible that Anna Linde’s 1925 disc was the first harpsichord performance to be recorded electrically (rather than acoustically), and the difference in sound quality became even clearer in the years immediately following. A 1928 Woodhouse performance of Bach’s Italian Concerto sounds surprisingly present even today, and the performance shows—perhaps best of all her recorded legacy—what her admirers so rightly admired. Indeed her artistry is such that I have thought, often, that had Mrs. Woodhouse needed to earn her living as Landowska did, she could have eclipsed the divine Wanda as a concert harpsichordist. However, as the wife of a titled Englishman she could not make a career onstage for money . . . and that was that! It would have been fascinating to have had two such determined women competing for the title of “the world’s most famous harpsichordist.” 

Realistically, however, Landowska’s tenacity, as well as her superb musical knowledge and sensitivity, should not be denigrated in any way. The 1928 recording of her own second Bourée d’Auvergne (Biddulph LHW 016) especially highlights the rhythmic dimension of her exciting artistry.

In the United States, where Landowska was a welcome visitor during the 1920s, there were several earlier players of the harpsichord; and, not too surprisingly, all of them attempted at least some pieces by French composers. Some of these participants in harpsichord history are nearly forgotten: one of more than passing importance was the Princeton professor Arthur Whiting: a well-received artist in nearby New York City and a campus legend at Princeton, he was known for his ability to attract huge crowds of undergraduates for his popular recitals on both piano and Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord. I have not located any recordings by Professor Whiting. The New York Times did mention his concert at Mendelssohn Hall (NYC) on December 11, 1907, which included a Gigue and Rigaudon by Rameau. The unnamed reviewer praised Whiting’s playing as “clear, beautifully phrased, and skillful in ‘registration’ if that term may be used to denote the employment of the different timbres that the instrument affords.

Writing a letter to the editor of The Times on January 11, 1926, the prominent music educator Daniel Gregory Mason offered a response to a letter from Landowska in which she made the statement that she had “single-handedly [!] restored the harpsichord to its rightful position in the world of music.” In this correspondence Professor Mason called attention to some other “‘Harpsichord Pioneers’—among whom he named the Americans: Mr. Whiting, Miss Pelton-Jones, Miss Van Buren, and Lewis Richards.”

The two ladies differed greatly: Frances Pelton-Jones was one of those wealthy women who could afford to pursue her artistic ambitions (rather similar to the would-be soprano Florence Foster Jenkins). Her recitals in New York were of the club-lady variety; baffled critics most often mentioned the stage decoration and the beauty of Pelton-Jones’s gowns. Lotta Van Buren, however, was a thoroughly professional player and harpsichord technician whose work with Morris Steinart’s instrument collection at Yale was very beneficial, as was her association with Colonial Williamsburg and its program of historical recreations, including musical ones. 

As for Lewis Richards, Mason proceeds: “Mr. Richards, who has played the harpsichord throughout Europe as a member of the Ancient Instrument Society of Paris, was, I believe, the first to appear as a harpsichordist with orchestra (the Minneapolis Symphony) in this country, and contributed much to the interest of Mrs. F. S. Coolidge’s festival in Washington . . .” 

Richards did indeed precede Landowska as the first known harpsichord soloist with a major symphony orchestra in the U. S. He was one of the few American musicians to record commercially in the 1920s. His Brunswick 10-inch discs of The Brook by Ayrlton, Musette en Rondeau by Rameau, Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith, and the Mozart Rondo alla Turca were played for me by Richards’ daughter, whom I was able to visit in her East Lansing, Michigan, home (on the day following an organ recital I had played there). The sound is somewhat compromised, for I was recording a scratchy 78-rpm disc that spun on an ancient turntable in a garage; but one gets the impression that Mr. Richards was a charismatic and musical player.  

These discs went on to make quite a lot of money in royalties, and Richards actually taught harpsichord at the Michigan State Institute of Music in East Lansing, which almost certainly certifies him as the first formally continuing collegiate teacher of harpsichord to be employed in the United States in the 20th century.

All of these players played early revival instruments. All have, therefore, used their pedal techniques to obtain a more kaleidoscopic range of colors than we may be used to. Of great interest (at least to me) is the recent emergence of curiosity about, and interest in these revival instruments and their playing techniques, frequently demonstrated by questions received from students. One of the finest concert figures of the “pedal” generations was the distinguished Yale professor Ralph Kirkpatrick (now more knowable than previously, courtesy of his niece Meredith Kirkpatrick’s recently published collection of the artist’s letters; see our review in the April 2015 issue). In his early Musicraft recordings, especially those from 1939, we are able to hear the young player show his stuff, just before his 1940 appointment to Yale, displaying superb musical mastery of his Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord. From Kirkpatrick’s program that included four individual Couperin pieces, culminating in Les Barricades Mistérieuses, and five movements from Rameau’s E-minor set, I ended this essay with the Rameau Tambourin (as played on The Musicraft Solo Recordings, Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 2, Pearl GEMM CD9245). Kirkpatrick’s mesmerizing foot-controlled decrescendo gives a perfect example of his skill in “pedaling the French.”

(From a paper read in Montréal, May 23.)

 

HKSNA 2015 International Conference in Montréal

Hosted by McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, the fourth annual conclave of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (May 21–24) offered lectures, mini-recitals, and evening concerts, far too many events for any single auditor to encompass. Two papers that followed mine, Elisabeth Gallat-Morin’s beautifully illustrated “The Presence of French Baroque Keyboard Instruments in New France” and Graham Sadler’s innovative “When Rameau Met Scarlatti? Reflections on a Probable Encounter in the 1720s” attested to the depth of innovative scholarship.

McGill’s instrument roster includes the superb Helmut Wolff organ in Redpath Hall and 15 harpsichords. One third of these came from the workshop of the Montréal builder Yves Beaupré; among the other ten instruments is a 1677 single-manual Italian instrument from the collection of Kenneth Gilbert. This unique historic treasure was available for viewing and playing for small groups of attendees.

The Vermont builder Robert Hicks was the only harpsichord maker who brought an instrument for display. Max Yount demonstrated this eloquent double harpsichord in a masterful recital presentation of Marchand’s Suite in D Minor. Clavichord took center stage for Judith Conrad’s program. Karen Jacob’s thoughtful memorial tribute to Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society founder George Lucktenberg was enhanced by several solicited remembrances from others whose lives had been touched by the late iconic early keyboard figure.

Evening concerts were presented by harpsichordist/organist Peter Sykes and six former students who organized a tribute to McGill organ professor emeritus John Grew. Saturday’s concert brought the final stage of the ninth Aliénor international competition for contemporary harpsichord music. Six winning works (selected by a jury from nearly fifty submitted pieces) were performed by HKSNA President Sonia Lee (Laura Snowden: French Suite), Larry Palmer (Sviatoslav Krutykov: Little Monkey Ten Snapshots), James Dorsa (Ivan Bozicevic: If There is a Place Between, and his own composition Martinique), Andrew Collett (playing his own Sonatina for Harpsichord), and Marina Minkin (Dina Smorgonskaya: Three Dances for Harpsichord). Following an intermission during which the audience submitted ballots naming their three favorite works, Aliénor presented world premieres of two commissioned works for two harpsichords: Edwin McLean’s Sonata No. 2 (2014), played by Beverly Biggs and Elaine Funaro, and Mark Janello’s Concerto for Two (2015), played by Rebecca Pechefsky and Funaro.

And the three pieces chosen by the audience? Smorgonskaya’s Three Dances for Harpsichord, Collett’s Sonatina, and Dorsa’s Martinique. Bravi tutti.

 

Comments, news items, and questions are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, e-mail: [email protected].

Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer
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Bytes to be proud of: A reader comments on tempi in early music

In mid-April I received a most welcome communication from musicologist and keyboardist Beverly Jerold Scheibert, whose extensive research adds considerable information supporting my comments about excessive velocity in the performance of some of Duphly’s more virtuosic harpsichord pieces. With her permission I am sharing her comments and, more importantly to our readers, the citations for her published work so those who are interested may explore more thoroughly the depth of this ongoing topic.

She wrote: 

 

Your article in the April issue of The Diapason is right on! A terrific disconnect exists between the early sources and what most performers do today. Take instruments, for example. How many performers realize that our (contemporary) reproductions are a dramatic improvement over the original ones, thereby enabling much, much faster tempos? The limitations of early instruments are documented in my article “18th-Century Stringed Keyboard Instruments from a Performance Perspective” published in Ad Parnassum: A Journal of 18th- and 19th-Century Instrumental Music, vol. 9, issue 17 (April 2011), pp. 75–100; and in my book The Complexities of Early Instrumentation: Winds and Brass (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015).

Continuing, she noted: 

 

You mention L’Affilard and Pajot as being cited today in support of rapid tempos. My article in the Dutch Journal of Music Theory, 15/3 (November 2010), pp. 169–189, examines this question, finding that errors in those texts led to false conclusions. Other early sources that have been misinterpreted are discussed in “Numbers and Tempo: 1630–1800,” found in Performance Practice Review: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/ppr/vol17/iss1/4. There are also the famous Beethoven tempo marks, in which skullduggery plays a leading part, as shown in the article “Maelzel’s Role in Beethoven’s Symphonic Metronome Marks,” The Beethoven Journal, 24/1 (Summer 2009), pp. 14–27. Lastly, there is the matter of engaging the listener meaningfully, so that the composer’s details are not lost in a whirl of notes.

It has been a great pleasure to peruse such well-grounded research presented with style and grace and filled with cogent period quotations. One sample that induced tears of laughter was encountered on page 98 of the Ad Parnassum article, cited above: 

 

Consider the composer Anton Reicha’s engaging account of his duties at one of Beethoven’s recitals, which probably took place in Bonn before 1792:

One evening when Beethoven was playing a Mozart piano concerto at the Court, he asked me to turn the pages for him. But I was mostly occupied in wrenching out the strings of the piano which snapped, while the hammers stuck among the broken strings. Beethoven insisted on finishing the concerto, so back and forth I leaped, jerking out a string, disentangling a hammer, turning a page, and I worked harder than did Beethoven.” (Source footnoted: Prod’Homme, Jacques Gabriel: ‘From the Unpublished Autobiography of Antoine Reicha’ in The Musical Quarterly, XXII/3 [1936], p. 351).

The complete abstract of this Jerold article reads: 

 

Documentation about the practical usage of the clavichord, harpsichord, and piano in the eighteenth century indicates that the first two had considerably more volume than today’s reproductions, and that the mechanical limitations of all three instruments could not have permitted today’s advanced technique. In German-speaking countries, the expressive clavichord was favored for solo usage until late in the century, when the improving piano began to assume this role. In contrast, the harpsichord’s loud, penetrating tone was valued for leading and holding together ensembles of musicians who had never experienced metronome training. Its stiff keyboard action, however, could deform the fingers (except in France, where the quilling was lighter). Frequent repairs and strident tone quality, too, led to the harpsichord’s demise. The marked differences between the Viennese and English piano actions brought both advantages and disadvantages for each.

 

Revelatory indeed! So clavichords were not mere “whisper-chords” and harpsichords were able to dominate ensembles! And stiff actions may have required strengths similar to those needed for playing large tracker organs? Who else has researched these matters so thoroughly?

A second abstract (for “The French Time Devices Revisited” published in the Dutch Journal of Music Theory) observes:

 

Much disparity exists among the metronome marks derived from the tempo numbers for early eighteenth-century French time-measuring devices. While some are reasonable, others are implausibly rapid. A newly discovered source, which offers both the Paris dancing master Raoul Auger Feuillet’s tempo numbers for various dance forms and a detailed drawing of the pendulum device for which they were intended, solves the mystery of the conflicting numbers. A comparison of his numbers for pendulum lengths for various dance forms with those for the same dance forms from the two sources with consistently extreme tempos (Michel L’Affilard and Louis-Léon Pajot, comte d’Onzembray) indicates an almost exact correlation when all are measured according to pendulum length instead of the presumed sixtieths of a second. Other deductions of overly rapid tempos result from assuming an incorrect beat unit.

Author Beverly Scheibert first came to the attention of the wider world of harpsichordists with the publication of her excellent study Jean-Henry D’Anglebert and the Seventeenth-Century Clavecin School, issued by Indiana University Press in 1986. Even in this early book she dealt with possible misconceptions about French dance tempi in its third chapter (“Style and Tempo”). I first met Beverly Jerold (the name she most often uses for her current writing) during a Boston Early Music Festival event, and we have occasionally crossed paths (but happily not verbal swords) since then. She has been most kind in sending me various articles that I might have missed otherwise. Now, with this current correspondence, she has once again demonstrated generosity of spirit, and I am pleased that she included enough detailed information to buttress the comments in my small paragraph, and even more grateful that she has given us permission to share these quotations, sources, and abstracts.

 

Postludium: Two contemporary clavichords

In March, during the Oberlin meeting of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America, two clavichords of exceptional tonal beauty and considerable volume (at least in comparison to many other clavichords, including those in my own collection) were heard in half-hour programs. For her program of two Württemberg Sonatas by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, Carol Lei Breckenridge played an instrument built by Paul Irvin (Portland, Oregon: www.pyirvin.com), and in the second program devoted to music of Samuel Scheidt, Judith Conrad used a clavichord by Douglas Maple (Lemont, Pennsylvania: www.douglasmaple.com). Both highly skilled players were well served by these experienced builders who had created instruments of credible volume and exciting resonance. Each instrument had a keyboard that welcomed comfortable and assured playing; and, to my knowledge, no broken strings or recalcitrant keys caused undue hardships. Rather, these exciting instruments allowed both artists to play with taste, palpable feeling, and a communicated sense of suitably musical tempi. Bravi to all involved!

 

Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer
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Christmas musings:

Several suggestions for a
“Giving or Receiving” book list

While surveying the vast array of books, scores, and recordings packed into nearly every room of our house, I often reflect on the immense amount of research, practice, and sheer hard work required to produce each item. Quite a number of them have been gifts from family, friends, students, or the authors/performers themselves. Since vacating my university studio-office in August 2015 the ability to locate specific items from this large collection has decreased exponentially. Piles of music are found in closets and stacked in random spots, including the garage, which is filled to overflowing with filing cabinets. Newly installed bookcases are loaded with items needing to be shelved in some logical order. Thus, I seem to spend more and more time searching, which allows less time for researching. But, on the positive side, I have rediscovered many items not accessed for decades, and, as the author Charles R. Ballard wrote, circa 1890: 

 

I hear of many a ‘latest book’;

I note what zealous readers say;

Through columns critical I look,

With their decisive ‘yea’ and ‘nay’!

At times I own I’m half inclined

O’er some new masterpiece to pore;

Yet in the end I always find

I choose the book I’ve read before!

Such was the case during the last weeks of autumn as I spent many pleasant hours renewing acquaintance with Joseph Wechsberg’s The Best Things in Life. This author, born in Moravia, found himself in the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite his less-than-rudimentary knowledge of English (but equipped with a sturdy brain and a multi-linguistic background) he was able to become a stylish writer and prominent contributor to The New Yorker, where his essays on travel, gourmet dining, and amateur chamber music (in which he participated as a violinist who owned a genuine Stradivarius) catalog only a few of the delightful offerings that were anticipated eagerly as they appeared in print in the iconic magazine, well known for its literary standards.

My copy of Wechsberg’s 224-page tome held even more delights than I had remembered. (Note to readers: be sure not to overlook the chapter on “The Art of Listening.”) One thing that I had totally forgotten was that the book had been a gift from organist Cameron Johnson (deceased far too soon in 1993), my fellow student and best friend during our Eastman School graduate years. Cam sent it as a Christmas present in 1966, only three years after our mutual final commencement. When I came upon his generous inscription on an inside blank page, I was moved to tears. As I face the nearly impossible task before me of cataloguing all the hidden treasures in the collection I am sure there will be many more such discoveries, but few will bring back such golden memories as these. Wechsberg’s memoir (published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto) may be located in antiquarian sources: an online search revealed prices for it that ranged from four cents to $189, so acquiring this book could fit nearly any budget. For an instructive read from an author who immediately becomes a friend, I recommend The Best Things in Life.

Among the better things for pursuing life, library, and happiness are thirteen enchanting books written by Mark
Schweizer. Shortest of these, related to his St. Germaine mystery series, is the “Seasonal Entertainment” (so designated by the author) The Christmas Cantata (2011), a slim offering of just slightly less than 100 pages. It is the heartwarming tale of a fictional Christmas Eve “miracle” told in alternating flashback and present-time installments. Mentions of composer/master teacher Nadia Boulanger, Mozart, Paris, Widor, and Virgil Thomson (to drop only a few names) set the scene and a gently moving conclusion comforts the soul, but might cause some furtive tears, as well. A story rather reminiscent of O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi in its ability to warm the heart while allowing plenty of laughter, it is available from St. James Music Press (sjmpbooks.com). I suggest ordering multiple copies to share with others. Your music- and mystery-loving friends will thank you not only for this novella, but also for the introduction to the madcap escapades of Hayden Konig, police chief and organist-choirmaster of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in this imaginary (but slyly realistic) North Carolina town.

 

A recommended recording

 

Luca Oberti disc

French composers Louis Marchand (1669–1732) and Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749) are quite well known to organists, but I do not recall having seen their names very often (if ever) on harpsichord recital programs. I do own the scores for each man’s complete works for our instrument but I must confess that I had not spent much time delving into these slim collections. Recently, however, I purchased Italian harpsichordist Luca Oberti’s single-disc offering of the complete Pièces de Claveçin from both composers (Stradivarius CD STR37025, recorded in 2014, with a total playing time of 62 minutes and 55 seconds), and his sensitively played recital encouraged an examination of the printed pages. The disc comprises four dance suites (two from each composer), all four of which begin with a Prelude (more or less un-measured). Marchand’s suites are in D Minor (nine movements) and G Minor (eight movements) each originally published in a separate volume, the first in 1699, the second in 1702. There are, additionally, three pieces, one (La Vénitienne) that appeared in a collection (1707), the other two found in manuscripts. Clérambault’s first suite (C Major) consists of eleven movements: my favorite among the unmeasured preludes begins it, and the finale is a second menuet: a miniscule rondo that Oberti chooses to play on the buff stop for an enchantingly delicate ending. Suite Two (C Minor) comprises only five items: the Prelude and four dances: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue. The fine-sounding instrument is by Andrea Restelli (1990), based on an instrument by Goujon-Swanen.

 

Twenty-first century music
for harpsichord

The British Harpsichord Society, an organization founded in 2002, is “free and open to all.” Simply accessing its website will reap information on enrollment (recommended) and grant access to its online journal. Under the rubric “Listening” one may find detailed information about the society’s pioneering disc of prize-winning compositions selected by jury at the UK’s first-ever contemporary harpsichord composition competition, a 2012 event that garnered more than ninety entries from composers representing eighteen countries.

The site also contains information about the resulting compact disc, Shadow Journey, issued by Prima Facie records (http://ascrecords.com/primafacie/). The list of participating players is a stellar one: Maggie Cole, Mahan Esfahani, Goska Isphording, Penelope Cave, Jane Chapman, Christoph Kaufmann, and our own Elaine Funaro (who plays music by Aliénor-winning composers Thomas Donahue and Ivan Božičević among others). The BHS kindly sent a copy of their premiere disc, but having not seen scores for any of the fourteen pieces recorded, I do not wish to comment on likes or non-likes. For those who are both adventurous and curious about new trends in harpsichord repertoire, this disc will be a welcome guide, but not an easy listening experience nor particularly genial background music. The idea of including music by the competition’s jurors is a good one, allowing, as it does, some possible windows into the soundscape of ears and minds that selected the winners. Congratulations to the British Harpsichord Society for this valuable addition to the ever-expanding repertoire of the harpsichord.

 

In conclusion: One small Christmas gift for our readers

Since our column began with a recommended memoir, here, in a sort of ABA form, is a short excerpt from Letters from Salzburg (A Music Student in Europe, 1958–1959), published by Ivar Lunde’s Skyline Press (Eau Claire, Wisconsin, 2006). Comprising more than fifty letters I wrote to my parents, as well as excerpts from personal travel diaries, comments (in bold italics) about things better not shared with the elders, and a generous sprinkling from photographs taken during the European sojourn, this book preserves a period-picture of post-war Austria, Italy, France, and northern Europe during their gradual rebuilding from the devastation caused by two consecutive world wars. This unprecedented educational experience changed the lives of all 88 students who participated in the first year-long program of required foreign study initiated by Oberlin College: the entire class of junior music majors was sent to spend a full academic year at the Salzburg Mozarteum. No exceptions possible: not a single junior music class was available at the Ohio campus.

What follows is excerpted from pages 46–50, documenting my first Christmas away from home (I had just turned 20). Four of us expatriates pooled our finances to rent a Volkswagen for the holiday trip south from Salzburg to Rome and Tivoli, with a return via Assisi and Venice.

 

Interlude I: Christmas in Italy

[Organ major teacher] Professor Sauer’s unmarried daughter Lotte worked as a secretary in the administrative office of the Mozarteum. Always kind and helpful to us students, Fräulein Sauer was a pleasant person to “pop in” and see. She surprised me with her response to my excited announcement, “We are going to Italy for our Christmas vacation.” 

“Oh,” said Lotte Sauer, “how I envy you.”

“Fräulein Sauer,” I replied, “surely you have been to Italy many times. Why would you envy us?”

Yes, Herr Palmer, I have been to Italy many times . . . but I envy you the first time.”

  

Florence, 25 December 1958: We hopped into the car and drove up the winding road to Fiesole. After parking the car in the main square we began to climb the hills, reveling in the warm sunshine, the panorama stretched before us, and the wonderful feeling of being out in nature after a large meal.

Passing a Roman ruin, I climbed faster than the rest, and lost them—not intentionally. It was, however, gratifying to have a few moments alone. I found the St. Francis Monastery, built on Roman-Etruscan ruins of the Fiesole fortifications and then saw one of the rare views of a lifetime: the red sun setting over Florence. As twilight came on swiftly, I heard the monks sing the closing lines of a Palestrina motet, and I rested and worshipped briefly in the small chapel before going out again into the dusk, the Italian dusk of Christmas.

Walking back down to the church I met the others, and led them up for the magnificent view. We all sat in silence watching the day of Christmas fading away, and quietly we thought our thoughts of home and loved ones. While the last red rays still lingered over Florence, while the tall, slim pines and leafy olive trees were still silhouetted against the approaching night, we turned to the picturesque tearoom on the hill. It was six o’clock.

Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer
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HKSNA, Duphly, Skowroneck, Leonhardt, and Kreisler: A Twisted Tale

The 2016 meeting of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America took place in Oberlin, Ohio, March 20–24. Eschewing the expensive rooms at the about-to-be-replaced Oberlin Inn I decided to book lodging at the Ivy Tree, a charming bed and breakfast accommodation only a few blocks south of the Oberlin Conservatory. At breakfast on the penultimate day of the meeting I met the New York City-based harpsichordist Aya Hamada, a Japanese-American graduate of Juilliard, who mentioned that she had made a compact disc of works by Jacques Duphly. The following day she gave me a copy of that disc, recorded in France on a harpsichord “attributed to the builder Nicholas Lefebvre”—an instrument from the collection of Gustav Leonhardt.

The fourteen tracks comprising Ms. Hamada’s recording reward the listener with fine examples of Duphly’s oeuvre, chosen from all four of his published Pièces de Claveçin. Included are many favorites: Chaconne, Medée, Les Grâces, and La Forqueray from among those that have been mentioned in several recent columns. The playing is stylish and satisfying, the sound of the instrument resonant and exciting, and the explanatory notes, presented in both Japanese and English, recount the fascinating tale of a late twentieth-century “experiment” contrived by Leonhardt and the builder Martin Skowroneck.

Although the “Lefebvre” instrument was introduced to the public in April 1984, it was not until 2002 that Skowroneck published an article giving forth the information that the instrument was not by an eighteenth-century French maker, but one that the contemporary German maker had crafted utilizing historical techniques, hand tools rather than electrically powered ones, and old materials. The fake date for the two-manual instrument was given as 1755 (in tribute to the fact that it was Skowroneck’s 55th instrument), and Leonhardt utilized the resulting harpsichord for recording works by Bach, Forqueray, and other classic French composers. The instrument passed muster with most of the listening public—after all, it was our revered Leonhardt who was playing: thus all was well.

Hamada’s 2014 recording, made in the Chapelle de l’Hôpital Notre-Dame de Bon Secours in Paris, marks the first use of Skowroneck’s imitation French double-manual instrument since Professor Leonhardt’s death in 2012. This disc, issued as WCC-7784 (Nami Records Co. Ltd., Japan, available at Amazon.com) is thus not only Hamada’s debut recording, but also a tangible memento of an extraordinary prank concocted by two friends, who between them provided some of the most exhilarating instruments and playing heard in our time. The tale of their gentle hoax is well laid out in Hamada’s notes, which are based on Skowroneck’s article “The Harpsichord of Nicholas Lefebvre 1755: Story of a forgery without intent to defraud,” published in the Galpin Society Journal, vol. 55 (April 2002), pp. 4–14.

 

And what about Kreisler?

Being reminded of the successful attempt to dupe most of the antique instrument experts with their prank brought back to memory the somewhat similar decades-long practice of the elegant violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962), who, not wishing to have his own name appear so many times on his solo programs, labeled many of his own well-liked compositions with names from music’s past historical eras: Tartini, Boccherini, Porpora, Martini, Louis Couperin, Jean-Baptiste Cortier, Vivaldi, Friedemann Bach, Pugnani, Dittersdorf, Francoeur—most of them names not well known to audiences of the early twentieth century. 

When, in 1935, the New York critic Olin Downs queried the composer about the sources for these “early manuscripts,” Kreisler revealed his hoax. When various members of the critical fraternity expressed outrage at this nose-thumbing of their “expertise,” Kreisler responded, “You have already found the compositions worthy; while the name on them now changes, the value remains.” Today, known as Kreisler’s own creations, these works form a fairly important part of the solo violin repertoire. Favorites, dating from my earliest record collecting days in the mid-1950s, remain the exhilarating Concerto in C in the Style of Vivaldi from 1927 and the hauntingly beautiful Chanson Louis XIII and Pavane ‘in the Style of Louis Couperin’ from 1910 (decades before that Couperin became a staple of the French keyboard repertoire). Incidentally, I made my own harpsichord transcription of Kreisler’s gentle pastiche to play in a house concert several years ago.

Dredging up these memories reminded me that I had purchased an original edition of Kreisler’s autobiographical book Four Weeks in the Trenches: The War Story of a Violinist (published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York, in 1915). The “Great War”—now quite familiar to contemporary audiences since the Masterpiece Theatre segments of Downton Abbey—was in its early stages when Kreisler’s work, translated from the original German, appeared in print. How close the violinist came to dying in this conflict is touchingly chronicled in this brief memoir of 85 small-sized pages. I purchased the volume (at that time totally unknown to me) during an annual summer visit to the bookseller Nicholas Potter in Santa Fe. Re-reading Kreisler’s book provided yet another connection: my copy had once belonged to the prominent American composer Elinor Remick Warren (1900–91), as evidenced by her printed bookplate on the inside front cover. A Google search yielded fascinating insights into her long struggle to gain acceptance as a major composer—a status acknowledged when her 69-minute work The Legend of King Arthur became only the third American work of such magnitude to be presented at England’s Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester in 1995. (The only works from this side of the pond heard previously were both by Horatio Parker: Hora Novissima in 1900 and the third part of his St. Christopher in 1902.)

A twisted path indeed . . .

One further item of interest: while the Early Keyboard Journal (formerly published jointly by the Southeastern and Midwestern Historical Keyboard Societies) has fallen somewhat behind during the five years in which the successor organization, Historical Keyboard Society of North America, has been functioning, word from the recent board of directors meeting in Oberlin indicates that volume 30 is nearing publication. I encourage our readers to consider joining this excellent organization and thus receive this journal, which will include a thought-provoking, carefully reasoned article on Louis Couperin by the American harpsichordist Glen Wilson.

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